1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disc drying device and a disc drying method, and more particularly, to a disc drying device that allows simultaneous and quick drying of plural discs by a batch process and miniaturization of the device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the case of substrates for magnetic discs (hard discs) as information recording media, cleaning of the discs has been performed after the process of grinding, polishing, spattering and plating. For the cleaning of hard discs and substrates therefor (hereinafter these will be simply referred to as discs), plural cleaning processes and drying processes after the cleaning are provided.
Typically, the drying process is independent of the cleaning process. The discs after cleaning are immersed in a pure water container and then taken out therefrom to be subjected to the drying process so as to prevent cleaning liquid from remaining after the drying. In that case, the simultaneous handling of multiple discs, the drying processing during the delivery of the discs after cleaning and the like, are performed in order to enhance the throughput from cleaning to drying of the discs.
Such drying process is included in the disc cleaning processing in a broad sense, and devices have been known in which the cleaning and drying of discs are performed at the same time. As one of such devices, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2001-216634 discloses a disc cleaning and drying device using a spin-dry method in which discs are rotated to eliminate fluid adhering to the discs by centrifugal force and then the fluid is received by a rotating through-hole cover to be discharged to the outside.